Gz Systems – PureVPN Review – 2019

IntroGz Systems

PureVPN has been providing VPN services since 2007 It is not surprising that it currently maintains a long list of attributes: 2,000+ self-managed servers around 180+ locations, a wide choice of protocols, torrent support, DNS and IPv6 flow security, a wise kill switch, five devices enabled and payment via Bitcoin should you require it. Gz Systems

Unusual Extras include’split tunneling’ (you decide which traffic goes via the VPN, and which uses your ISP) and the ability to create an instant Wi-Fi VPN hotspot on your notebook, and connect even more devices through that.

The Company offers dedicated apps for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android and Linux, extensions for Chrome and Firefox, and more downloads and tutorials to assist you set it up on routers, Kodi, Android TV, Amazon’s Fire TV Stick and more.

PureVPN PureVPN subscription options:

12 month plan – $5.75 a month ($69 total cost)

The Monthly plan is average value at $11 (#8.40), but the annual plan is merely a monthly $2.99 (#2.30), a excellent thing.

This Drops into a monthly $1.32 (#1) if you cover 5 decades upfront, a total of 79 (#61). The price is so low, although we would suggest registering for this long, you might think that it’s worthwhile. Private online Access offers a decent two-year program for $2.91 (#2.24) a month, for instance, but that’s still $70 (#54) in complete, not much less. If you simply use PureVPN for a couple of years, you’re getting adequate price.

The By utilizing some advertising trickery, company spoils this fantastic belief a little. Each plan has a’last sold’ indicator which tells you if a person last signed up, and usually it is only a couple of minutes ago.

This is Intended to show you the service is, but we’re not sure that the amounts are genuine. We refreshed the page several times, and seen in different browsers, and also the’last sold’ figures varied widely. They act as though they’re chosen randomly, instead of corresponding to any actual world events.

PureVPN does not advertise a trial. We dug deep and found a webpage for something known as a’3-day trial account’, but that is a little misleading. It’s really just a commercial program in which you pay a non refundable $2.50 (#2) for 3 days of support.

A guarantee is for the Industrial plans, which can be more generous than most. PureVPN’s refund policy used to incorporate some sneaky circumstances where you would not get back your money if you’d connected more than 100 occasions, or used over 3GB of data transfer, but we were pleased to see these happen to be dropped. It’s currently advertised as a’no questions asked, risk-free, stress-free’ money-back guarantee, so if you’re miserable, simply send an email and request a refund. Gz Systems

Apps

Handing Over your money to PureVPN is remarkably easy, since the business supports more or less every payment format there is: credit card, PayPal, Bitcoin and many different cryptocurrencies (through CoinPayments), AliPay, various gift cards, and over 150 additional payment procedures via the Paymentwall platform.

After Parting with your cash, download links direct you to apps for Windows, Mac, iOS and Android, the browser extensions and much more. We grabbed the Windows client, and as it was downloading, a welcome email arrived with login details.

Setup Was simple, and after a speedy launch, the Windows client prompted us to pick one of five modes: Stream, Internet Freedom, Security/Privacy, File Sharing and Dedicated IP. We suspect most people will wonder if to select Internet Freedom or even Security/Privacy, and there is no advice.

The Support site told us that choosing a manner would optimize PureVPN’s settings . The Streaming and File Sharing manners would optimize for speed, although for example, picking Security/Privacy would prioritize safety over all else.

VPN This strategy might be appreciated by Beginners as it means that they do not need to know and tweak the underlying settings. But experts are likely to approve, as there’s no obvious indication of what each mode does. There’s nothing wrong with task-based mode selection, but we’d prefer a clear display of the settings that are unsuitable for each style, so experienced users can comprehend the consequences of their choice.

After Selecting a style, you’re in a position to pick locations from a dash. This has plenty of functionality, allowing you to navigate locations by cities or countries, search by name, see ping times, or make favorites for quick recall later.

Alternatively, Choosing a Purpose option displays a listing of tasks you may want to execute — unblocking Netflix or other streaming sites, using VoIP, obtaining social networking websites or anything — and also you can in theory select one of these, and allow PureVPN to select a host for you.

Connect To a server and the client displays your connection status. There’s also an optional bandwidth graph showing your information transfers. You won’t need it, but it’s excellent to see PureVPN making the attempt.

The Customer makes smart of usage of alarms to be certain that you know what’s happening. Choose a location and it will not waste your time. But if you change to the customer notices another application, and a pop-up window appears to let you know when it disconnects and connects.

A bonus Gravity characteristic blocks access. We would always like to purchase this kind of feature from a specialist security firm, but Gravity is a lot smarter than the majority of the VPN-related competition. As well as blocking harmful links, it may turn on Safe Search for the main search engines, block entire categories of website, whitelist sites you always wish to access, and blacklist sites you do not. Oh, and it can block advertisements . Gz Systems

The Settings Box is a highlight, especially for experienced users, since it’s absolutely filled with interesting and unusual extras.

The Customer does have options to start on auto-connect and system start, for instance. It may open your default browser as soon as you’re protected.

Want a Different protocol? PureVPN allows you to Pick from OpenVPN TCP/UDP, PPTP, L2TP, SSTP and IKEV. There’s also an Automatic option which the client suggests offers the very best speed and security, but from what we can see, that is not true: it only cycles through the other protocols till it finds one that works.

Split Tunneling permits you to send the traffic of programs by your VPN. That takes more time to install, and you need to be very certain which apps you want to divert, but it can additionally optimize performance by restricting your data transfer needs.

The VPN Hotspot is an extra that is unusual, configuring a hotspot which turns the server computer into a restricted VPN router. Once it is enabled, you’ll be able to use your telephone, tablet computer or other devices to get online via the host’s PureVPN connection.

And the List goes on, using IPv6 leak security, a remarkably configurable kill switch, along with a multi-port alternative which intelligently chooses the best port, preventing any closed or throttled options. You can opt to utilize a non-NAT network to acquire a special IP address, port forwarding is available should you require it, along with a Support section doesn’t only link to the website: it eases creating a support ticket from inside the customer.

Although There is plenty of power , the interface is a mess that is clumsy and inconsistent. There are standard buttons, radio buttons, links, icons and sidebars, they don’t necessarily work as you would expect, and even though we figured out how to navigate around the machine, it never felt natural or comfortable.

Still, The customer did a good job for us, blocking DNS and WebRTC leaks, with the kill switch successfully killing our net access if the VPN connection fell. It might appeal if you will use a number of their client’s many added features.

We took a Look at PureVPN’s Android app, and it was much the exact same story as the Windows version. After picking a’Mode’ (not sure why)we were able to pick cities, states, or pick a Goal (optimized for China, unblock this or that streaming assistance, etc ). It’s more awkward to use than the normal VPN app, but you’ll figure it out.

What is Intriguing is the Android program doesn’t drop most of options and the desktop’s settings, which is exactly what we see. It has a very similar feature set, such as a choice of protocol (OpenVPN TCP/UDP or IKEv2), a kill switch, split tunneling, port forwarding, Gravity URL filtering, and more. If you will use some or all of that operation, it’s well worth a go. Gz Systems

Privacy and logging

In a Previous inspection we pointed out that PureVPN created a big deal of its’zero log’ policy. Nevertheless, the small print stated there was a session logging, which seemed to include the time you connect to a host, your incoming IP address and the total bandwidth used.

This Isn’t a minor detail. Back in October 2017 reports appeared of a guy being arrested on suspicion of conducting”an extensive cyberstalking campaign”, in part based on PureVPN records showing that its services were obtained from originating IPs including the accused man’s house and office. The’zero log’ VPN retained some sort of logs, after all, and those were able to assist connect internet actions to a particular account.

PureVPN sort of responded in a blog to the Post, where the company pointed out that it didn’t maintain full logs, like your browsing history, and it hadn’t done anything to violate its privacy policy, where the session logging was cited.

This Doesn’t address the issue of the company described itself as maintaining’zero logs’ at the primary portion of the website, however, when this turned out not to be completely true. That’s also not a point. Logging policies are based almost entirely on trust, along with a VPN isn’t likely to be trusted if it’s seen to mislead consumers or bury the reality of a scenario from the small print.

PureVPN has at least updated its privacy Policy, which currently includes probably the most explicit no-logging sentence we have ever seen:’We DO NOT keep any record of your surfing activities, connection logs, documents of the VPN IPs assigned to youpersonally, your original IPs, your relationship time, the history of your surfing, the sites you visited, your outgoing traffic, the content or information you accessed, or the DNS queries generated by you.’

The Policy also explains the minimum link data it will record –‘We know the day you connected to a specific VPN place and from that Internet Service Provider’ — also covers plenty of other important issues in a clear and readable manner.

Then, the Fantastic news, is that PureVPN’s present Privacy policy says the ideal things and looks good. It is far better than the majority of the competition. However, the catch is that the previous logging narrative will understandably lead some folks to question whether they could trust what the company says. We can’t tell you what to believe, but it’s well worth checking out both PureVPN’s original blog defense and its current privacy policy before you make up your mind.

Netflix

PureVPN Creates more of an attempt to support website unblocking. The company does not just make airy promises on the website then forget about them later, it includes special support for streaming inside its apps, in theory allowing you to get Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, BBC iPlayer and a plethora of different services from where you are in the world. Gz Systems

We Double-clicked that the BBC choice, and viewed as the client displayed , our default browser opened, and connected a’err-network-changed’ message. What? This seemed like a severe problem, however, the browser had only discovered the change in our community settings as the customer connected, and once this was complete, the BBC iPlayer site opened and streamed content as usual.

It had been The exact same story with Netflix. The customer launched our browser before the connection was complete, thus we saw the exact same error message, but that vanished mechanically, and we were free to browse and flow whatever Netflix content we liked.

You’re Not restricted to the services built to PureVPN’s programs . YouTube was not contained on the listing, for example, but linking to a US server got us in.

Performance

Our Normal performance tests involve running custom applications which links assessing speeds time, location and much more. Regrettably, we could not get this working with PureVPN, or figure out why (whether that is our fault or theirs, we can not be convinced ).

But even If we did, an warning in the small print clarifies that consumers are not allowed to have more than 200 sessions every day. That won’t concern most people, but it does become a problem when you are running VPN benchmarks. Gz Systems

We dropped Back on our old manual way of linking via clients and checking the results from various speed checking sites, such as SpeedTest.net, Fast.com and TestMy.net. This doesn’t give us as much data to use, but there is still enough to get a feel for exactly what the service can deliver.

Our local UK servers diverse a bit more than normal, but nevertheless gave us quite acceptable speeds of 50-65Mbps on our test 75Mbps connection.

Close European rates were mildly below average. they were, although netherlands connections can often deliver much the very same speeds for us as UK servers.

US Performance ranged from around 30Mbps on the west shore, to 50Mbps. That’s far from the fastest we’ve seen, but unless you’re likely 24 hours of intensive torrenting, it’s probably not likely to cause you some issues.

As usual, Speeds tailed off drastically to the places that were less typical or more distant. For instance, New Zealand averaged 12Mbps, Vietnam had been 10Mbps, Taiwan barely touched 1Mbps, also China ranged down to such a speed the web stalled mid-test. That puts the size of PureVPN’s system into perspective (having heaps of servers doesn’t matter if they’re unusably slow), but if you’re only planning to use the major locations, it won’t matter very much.

On a few Events, our PureVPN Windows customer was not able to connect to our test server that is preferred. The Cancel button did not work, however, the issue here is that the link didn’t time out for several moments, although that’s not uncommon.

Everything You Want To Know About PureVPN

The Evaluation of Speed — How Quick is PureVPN?

Let’s start off by making something clear, i.e. whatever VPN support you use, the online speed will take a hit. That strike is a result. The majority of VPN providers make every possible attempt to make certain that the strike is as gentle as it can be. Unlike what many folks are going to have you think that it’s not likely to be like using dial-up.

PureVPN, when compared to other similar VPN services, appears to be much quicker. Yes it does live up to the promise of being the quickest in the industry. Gz Systems

The way we compared and tested the operation was by using Ookala’s nifty speed testing website and program. We then ran the speed test on both international and domestic servers. We compared the outcomes and that’s the way we found PureVPN to be quicker.

PureVPN has a domestic latency of a mere 6.7% percent. As a matter of fact, during our downloading evaluations, PureVPN improved speeds that by our calculations is an percent. We found that rival VPN providers were substantially slower. Some we suspect throttled download speeds perhaps because they did not want to worry their servers.

When it comes to uploads, PureVPN didn’t really boost it like it did with downloads, but it required a mere 4.5percent percent hit. If anything this is still among the very best scores we have seen from a VPN supplier.

During our international speed tests, the latency increased by 200%. Though download speeds have been still a whopping 403.8% better than some of the competing products I tested it against. The uploads have been 22.7% percent slower that is second best compared to possibly Hotspot Shield which enhanced the upload speed by 1.4% percent.

A Mind-Blowing Number of Servers

The map on the left lets you bypass the program’s default recommendation and choose a server on your own. Remember that by default PureVPN selects the fastest server which is frequently the one. When in China I noticed that it kept picking up servers in Hong Kong by default that’s not the fact but also simply nearby that the cyberspace of Hong Kong is much less rigorously censored as mainland China.

PureVPN has over 2000 servers which are dispersed across 140 countries and 180 locations around the globe. Servers are located in North America, Central America, South America, Asia, Europe, Asia, and Africa. You might believe that PureVPN only has servers in nations which block or maybe don’t censor sites, but you would be wrong. Servers in Russia, Turkey, and China are there just in case they were needed by you.

It Doesn’t Slow Down Your Internet

Over time VPN services, generally speaking, have received bad press for infamously slowing down net speeds that consumers have not been happy with obviously. Interestingly, there are many VPN providers that slow down what may be internet. Fortunately, with PureVPN that’s not true even if you use it to stream Netflix, YouTube, etc..

Along with not slowing down your net, PureVPN offers a number of other features like robust servers that are located around the globe and which scored tremendously throughout our speed tests. Then there’s also the simple fact that encryption is used by them, with programs for Android and iOS apparatus. Though there are more reasons to think about PureVPN as we’ll analyze in detail below. Gz Systems

Excellent Collection of Features and straightforward

I’ve used dozens of VPN apps through time, and PureVPN is like a breath of fresh air. It is quite easy to use and in relation to the last time I used the app its geared towards people that are new to using VPNs. As soon as PureVPN loads you’re prompted to choose from five choices, i.e. Security, Internet Freedom, Stream, Remote/Dedi IP (this feature gives you a dedicated IP) and Document Sharing. An experience that is based on the option selected is then delivered by the app.

The other thing I enjoy about PureVPN is that every one of the features are to the stage. For example, their Web Freedom feature enables you to choose what area you want to get Netflix from, such as from the united kingdom, Australia, etc.. In which it’s otherwise blocked, you could access Netflix.

Compared to the last time I used PureVPN now around it felt zippier. The interface has been glowing, with pictures some of that may be hard to read on a screen. Once you are connected to a server that is private, you are going to observe the IP address, link status, and the length of your session.

The visitors chart gives you a good feel for just how much bandwidth has been consumed, which is beneficial for anybody on a metered internet connection. Nonetheless, it’s important to mention here for those worrying about data caps which PureVPN does not have any. Thus, you’re only limited to what the ISP has in store for you!

Like most other competing VPN services, you pick the server and the country it is based in. You can search for servers and then click them to link. Some servers based on where you’re found are likely to be quicker than others because of lower latency.

You could also choose which protocols to use. Choose between OpenVPN, IKEv2, SSTP, PPTP, and L2TP. There is PureVPN’s very own stealth protocol which according to the provider ensures the best anonymity. Since folks like me have a difficult time understanding which protocols to select, PureVPN makes it easy by providing a speed and safety rating for each. The key point to notice here is because the security improves the speed slows down. You’ll need to hit a compromise between both based on what is needed. By default, a protocol is chosen by the program. Most people who don’t work for the CIA (pun intended) will probably be fine using the default alternative. Gz Systems

Hands-on and Initial Impressions

We have admittedly used PureVPN earlier, but following a hiatus or perhaps two decades we pretty much forgot how things worked. As soon as you’ve decided to register and download their applications, select a password and you are going to need to enter your email. Interestingly and perhaps confusingly, this is not what you will use into the software to log-in, but it is used for billing purposes.

Once subscribers have compensated, they get an email with the username and password in plain text. We have used other VPNs using the exact same method to distinguish payment identities from user identities which guarantees anonymity. Yet we think it may be confusing to customers however. Additionally, in our experience the email tends to property for some reason in your junk folder, so make certain before calling support, to check that also.

Support

PureVPN includes a support Website of troubleshooting guides and tutorials. The opening page points you Setup Guide, Troubleshoot, For Users in China and to see nearly all of these sections, and Netflix US, for instance include more information than you would expect.

The Installation Guide includes subsections for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android Smart TV, Routers and Devices, for example, and a number of those individual segments have more information than the entire support website of lesser VPNs.

Although it’s an impressive Quantity of work, we’re Unsure how effective and reliable it might be. We checked the guide OpenVPN setup guide, for example, and discovered it failed completely. OpenVPN was not installed correctly, there were no PureVPN configuration files, and there was no troubleshooting information in the guide to help us figure this out.

If the Site can’t help, you raise a support ticket from inside the customer or can send an email. We took the service and the ticket path done very well, with the aid team delivering us a friendly and useful response to our test question in barely over one hour.

Alternatively, You can use live chat on the site. We found it might take a minute or two to receive a reply, and even then, we weren’t given the level of aid by the agent since we had received to our query. PureVPN couldn’t get close to the level of chat service we’d obtained from opponents like ExpressVPN, afterward, but we’re still glad the choice is available. And with email support to hand, any live chat issues you may have are not too important. Gz Systems

Last verdict

PureVPN Comes bundled with a heap of strong features, which can be surprising considering the purchase price. These don’t always work as you may expect and there are tons of usability issues with the apps — but demanding users who will utilize this degree of VPN power must give PureVPN an appearance.